how to mend a heart (and the afterwards)
by california poppyseed
Summary: no one ever wrote a manual about what you were supposed to do next. sasusaku. canon-compliant.


summary:

no one ever wrote a manual about what you were supposed to do next.

…

They find themselves tangled in the nets woven from the words unspoken, caught in the words they can't find the shape to speak and so the air lies pregnant with pause and possibility and the beauty of two souls so deeply in love, but with no where to go.

...

Sakura thinks that his boy is so beautiful and breathlessly so he will break her heart into a million pieces before she can even think to speak.

(He already has.)

They fit together like puzzle pieces poorly cobbled together, she realizes. Words stilt in the air and they are awkward.

His back to her glows silhouetted in the night, the _uchiwa_ stark against the dark blue fabric spread across his broad shoulders.

(Shoulders, she thinks, that have carried far too many burdens for a boy as young as he.)

But she cannot help the tears that track down her cheeks, the night perfumed with desperation loss and love, as she realizes that she has come to love a boy beyond his beauty and grace, but for all his brokenness and ugliness that she now, in her own way, understands.

It breaks her, knowing that her heart, so whole and free of the twisted darkness he has had to endure, can level with his and his pain radiates through her own body as if it were her own.

So many stories have been written about lovers finding some sort of unspoken connection, a red string connecting two souls through time and fate. But just as she understands him, just as she is ready to, that red string threading through her fingers within her grasp, it is harshly ripped away.

She longs to reach out to him.

"I love you," she whispers, half to herself, half to his back.

She wakes up the next morning on a cold bench.

She does not cry.

…

Stolen moments of pining and wistfulness, chinks in impenetrable armor, of wondering what things could have been instead of what they are.

It's the small things: satiny reds glinting off tomatoes as she peruses through the market for groceries, her heart panging; the inky black of river stones as she peers into her reflections during missions; the red that coats her hands as she mends the bones and hearts and bodies of all except the one she yearns to mend the most.

Her heart remains stolid and devoted, but quiet with grief and love and everything else in between.

Meanwhile, he cannot ignore the flashes of pink of the sun as it crests over horizons he sees while on the move, hideout to hideout. It is too peachy, too orange compared to the soft pastels of her smiles and laugh. Sometimes he catches himself looking for her pink in flowers in spring, celadon jade eyes in calm glassy lakes.

His heart only clamps shut further, ignoring the stirrings like a bird's wings in his chest. He turns his face away from spring and color, retreating further into the dark.

...

He is austere and divine, clad in purple and dark hair over impassive eyes. Her breath catches in her throat.

He is here, finally. Right next to her. Where he belongs.

Two boys flank her as they charge into battle, together as they have always meant to be. It feels like some part of her heart has come back, found somewhere in a dark place and something she clutches to her chest; not quite whole, but at least together in the same broken place.

…

Peace.

A soft clock ticks against ascetic white walls. Sunlight slants through a spotted kitchen window, over to a tomato plant in a worn and loved pot by a sink. The tomato plant bears the beginning of new fruit, verbena green sinking into rich, lively reds.

The color of new beginnings and luck, not of blood and loss.

One sleeve of his shirt hangs loose. His remaining arm lays casually on the table. Dark hair falls over bright-with-the-future eyes. Thick lashes, framing eyes that shine like onyx, catch on the morning light as he raises his gaze to meet hers across the table.

She sits, feeling like an intruder, in a chair that is all too new to be comfortable, hands wrapped around a cup of green tea that reflects he wan with worry face.

Where do they go from here?

There are countless novels and poems and stories written of starcrossed lovers who find that their broken hearts fit perfectly together. But no one has ever written a manual on what to do after finding mutual understanding and loss. How do you put two lives back together, so irrevocably intertwined and tangled by fate and all the things that lie between the spaces of their fingers?

Tears threaten to fall in a rare moment of hopelessness, salt mingling with the cool and clean flavors of the green tea.

He reaches across the table, fitting his remaining hand over hers.

She cries even harder, but not from loss.

His hand fit perfectly over hers, and they are kids falling in love in all the wrong ways but so deeply all over again, and from this she knows that they will be okay.


End file.
